The Highest Standard of Romance

Please enjoy the first chapter of my new book, The Romantic Ideal—The Highest Standard of Romance for a Man. The book is now available in all formats on Amazon and other digital retailers. And happy International Men’s Day to you.

“Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.”

Anton Chekhov

The subject of this book is idealism in a particular domain of life: romance and everything connected to it—namely, intimacy, sex, and love. Idealism consciously upholds a standard of the highest possible good. If you're a romantically oriented individual, you will, by default, be seeking out a certain type of influence in another person that you can’t get anywhere else. It's a form of inherent passion. Romantic love is love defined by passion more than any other kind of love. Some people are born passionate about animals. Some people are born passionate about music. They naturally gravitate toward it, or anything related. You can love your friends and family, but that's not a love typically defined by passion. Passion is something that burns inside. It has an intrinsic fuel supply that never runs out so long as you are alive because it is a consequence of your design. It would be very harmful to tell someone to ignore any kind of authentic passion, to try to pretend it doesn't exist because it's risky or inconvenient or because it seems incompatible with their environment.

A romantic idealist (or, in my case, a romantic iDiehlist) faces a difficult time finding someone who lives up to their romantic ideals. And even if, by some miracle, you meet someone who has the potential to fit the bill, there’s still a whole heroic journey you have to go on together to make that relationship work at a level beyond basic compatibility. It’s not enough to win the lottery by finding the right person. You have to invest your winnings well and manage your wealth for life.

Romantics are brought into this world feeling a certain undeniable burden at their core. They carry it their whole lives and have likely always been aware of it. For many, society told them they would outgrow it and lower their idealistic standards to match the conditions of “the real world” everyone else lives in. I'm an idealist in many ways besides my orientation toward romance. I want world peace—a complete and permanent end to all war. Does that sound idealistic? Utterly impractical? Like something that would never ever happen, dooming me to disappointment? World peace is my ideal. If we can get even a little closer to that, I will be a little bit happier. But until we reach that ideal, I will still be disappointed with the state of the world. And such idealists are virtually guaranteed to see their ideals fail to actualize. “Disappointed idealist” is a cliché for a reason.

Every great artist who's ever lived and every person who’s ever championed an important cause has known the pain of idealism. They were tortured by an idea, a standard that burned in their head. They had to paint some incredible vision or fight some great injustice in their time. They had to change the world because reality was inadequate for them. Even the ones who died before the work was done may still have made a meaningful impact across generations. They made progress easier for those who came after. We have all benefited from the suffering of idealists who did not sacrifice their principles. Their reward came from the work itself, knowing that there was a chance all their effort might make a difference one day. It could, eventually, change some lives. It could go on to create something that didn't exist before, something that once seemed impossible.

Love does not have to hurt, but for the romantic idealist, it is likely to. Unmet expectations hurt, and love in its ideal form requires the setting of extremely high expectations. The test of idealism is if enduring all the pain and disappointment is worth it in the end. If you're the kind of person who would willingly jump back into hell for a chance at making it work and finally getting what you know you want and need to be fulfilled, you’re an idealist. I’m a romantic idealist who has repeatedly failed at enacting his romantic ideals—yet, against all odds, I have resisted the descent into romantic cynicism. I remain hopeful about and dedicated to the fulfillment of the standard I have set for myself about how romantic love will define my life.

“Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.”

George Carlin

People typically love the idea of love, the performance around love, more than the real thing. They cherish the gestures and symbols associated with it. If you really feel it, the symbols become superfluous. It's like a painting of a sunset compared to the real thing. It's just a visual reminder of something incredible. And there's no harm in having that unless you start to mistake it for the real thing. If you love someone, there's nothing wrong with buying them flowers. But the love and the feelings associated with those flowers are not dependent upon the act itself. And you don’t have to default to flowers as the symbol of your love just because it's common. You should do it because you know your lover actually appreciates flowers. Does the emotion of romantic connection exist independently of the gestures? Would it persist without them as a product of two romantic individuals’ unique chemistry?

Love songs, love stories, love letters, bouquets of flowers, and expensive diamond rings[1] are the sort of things non-romantics fill their conscious experience with to feel like they are participating in the illuminating dance of genuine intimacy. They need a constant resupply of these symbols for fear that the “magic” in their romantic relationships will run out. They feel only just enough of the hunger that they seek out a mere representation of what would actually satiate them. Such performative romantics will often be disappointed by real romance. It can never live up to all the pomp and hyperbole of the imagery derived from it, imagery that no longer accurately captures it. So, on they go, living in an invented world that has less and less to do with true romantic bonding. They are children playing dress-up compared to real adults who embrace the responsibilities of the real world. They are geeks cosplaying as their favorite comic book characters. LARPers[2] who have lost sight of what they are supposed to be role-playing—illusion without any connection to the real.

All types of love are shared identification with another being. Parents love their children to the point that their survival instincts extend to them. Friends and comrades bond over shared support, pastimes, and values. But romantics seek to merge both body and identity with the one they love. It is like a natural chemical reaction that automatically occurs when they are near the person they are most romantically compatible with. The extreme end of natural romantic compatibility is the ever-elusive, much-fabled “soulmate,” which does not have to mean the one-and-only great love that two people are predestined for from birth. A naturalistic explanation works fine, too. Soulmates are people who have the rarest and highest capacity for romantic bonding due to their complementary nature.[3] They fill each other’s needs so strongly that it nullifies their tendency to seek out alternatives. However, it is not a foregone conclusion that they will find one another and put the work and growth into making their ideal relationship work. Both must embrace their nature as romantics and seek the highest form of their self-expression, which they know is found in one another.

Romantics are more sensitive to the bonding mechanisms between compatible lovers. It becomes an overlay for their experience of the world, related to an intuitive sense that your life, your ability to live out your identity to the fullest, is incomplete so long as it is missing the influence of the feminine (if you are masculine) or the masculine (if you are feminine). While non-romantics can casually ignore the half they are missing, romantics cannot. Hungry creatures are impelled to find food. Those in the cold and dark await the coming sun or huddle around the fire for vital warmth. Romantic people recognize that there is a better, upgraded version of themselves, their fundamental potential, waiting for them when they bond with the right person—and that the same divine luxury awaits the person they bond with. A romantic man is chronically burdened, and he cannot remove the burden on his own, no matter how smart or capable he pushes himself to become. He needs her. He needs the influence he finds only in her.

Romanticism results from acknowledging the natural imbalance in one’s soul and all the limitations that come with it. Two people imbalanced in complementary ways create romantic polarity—the eternal, exciting, sacred dance between a man embodying his masculinity and a woman embodying her femininity. If everyone were eternally balanced, androgynous, and neutral, there would be no drive to bond with one’s reciprocal. People who fall under this description may have never really understood why romance is so important to some people. Regardless, they have much to gain from learning what the experience is like for diehard romantics.

The ideal outcome of romantic love is a specific, elaborate, sophisticated state of being that's incredibly rare in the universe. It only occurs under just the right conditions for it. And maybe you can sustain it if you're very smart, very determined, and very emotionally mature. Most people have to search their whole lives to figure out what is capable of making them truly happy. Romantics are lucky in that regard. They already know what they need. They just face the mountainous task of making it happen without falling into the trap of mistaking a false or unhealthy bond for the real thing.

The love story most associated with the NBC sitcom Friends is, undoubtedly, that of unconfident nerd Ross Geller and preppy “girl next door” Rachel Green. Their on-screen will-they-won’t-they romance spanned from 1994 to 2004 and inspired many shallow romantic tropes that still show up across television genres. The show ends on what it frames as the climax and culmination of their chronically on-and-off relationship, with Rachel famously getting off the plane that would have taken her out of Ross’ life to pursue her dream job in Paris. Instead, she decides that this time, things will finally work out for them, despite them having tried and failed so many times before, to the point of already having broken up and gotten back together several times, been married and divorced, had a baby they raise separately, and ruined each other’s attempts at relationships with new people. Has there ever been a more toxic on-screen relationship that refused to end?

On the same show, the understated friendship-gradually-turned-romance of sarcastic Chandler Bing and high-strung Monica Geller stands in direct contrast as a heroic and healthy partnership. Each member of the partnership is deeply flawed but compensates for the other’s weaknesses with their strengths. Because they have spent years developing affection for one another as close friends, once they allow themselves to recognize their great physical chemistry, their romantic feelings quickly propagate into love that results in enduring marriage. As complementary opposites, could they be any more perfect for one another? If Friends had been a more mythological show, Chandler and Monica would have been its romantic focus. Ross and Rachel would have been framed as a failed, codependent[4] romance that nobody should aspire to, and their story would have ended with the two of them growing mature enough to wish each other well as they went their separate ways.

"If I'm the best, it's only because you've made me the best."

Chandler Bing to Monica Geller, Friends

Someone unsatisfied with themselves does not have a whole and sustainable identity. They should not pair-bond[5] with anyone, or they will forever be trying to compensate for what they have not developed within themselves. People can spend their lives chasing after satisfaction in infinite, invalid ways if they don’t take the time to critically assess what kind of person they would have to be to feel like they are embodying who they truly are. People have to work very hard to develop their character, to approve of, at the deepest level, the people they are. Even after all that important work, they could remain far from fulfilled as romantically oriented individuals if they cannot yet partake in the actions, the external accomplishments that would give them the sense of meaning they require. There is no further work they can do on themselves to create fulfillment. They have to venture out into the universe and apply themselves out there.

Conscious unfulfillment drives people to do incredible things. A man who is happy alone has no reason to seek out his soulmate and build his relationship with her. But for the romantically oriented man, his relationship is his life's great work of art. His Sistine Chapel. His Statue of David. His Mona Lisa. Life-changing romance, the kind people write love songs about and recreate in cultural mythology, is vital to the pursuit of his conception of fulfillment. It would be paradoxical to insist such a man achieve this before entering into a romantic relationship because building that relationship is what brings him fulfillment. It would require him to consciously deny the truth of who he is.

However, even for the most romantic man in the world, his romantic life cannot be the only thing that brings him fulfillment. There has to be something else he considers all-important, something worth pursuing throughout his life. The right woman embodies his love and acts as a mechanism through which he pursues everything else important to him (and what she respects and loves him for). He does the best he can in those areas, even while single and alone, operating at a fraction of his potential before he finds the love of his life. A man whose whole life revolves around only his woman becomes a needy, codependent puppy in her eyes. No woman wants that in a man unless she's a narcissistic manipulator.

Why should it be so difficult for a compatible man and woman to come together and fulfill their mutual wants in the domain of romance? Why is falling in love with and marrying the right person seen as one of modern life's most difficult (but most essential) tasks? Most people are not clear on who they are and what they want. Romance of the right caliber is one aspect of full self-expression, and most people fail at expressing who they really are. Various fears and insecurities keep them from ascending to everything they are capable of, especially when doing so would go against the social order they are part of. Romantic bonding requires the conquering of all fears and insecurities that would prevent it. It requires two independent people to become the masters of their own lives and willfully choose each other as the expansion of their self-expression.

Still, it often seems that a codependent relationship built on personal weakness and undeveloped identity has almost everything in common, on the surface, with a healthy, self-actualized one. Our timeless love songs frequently boast about needing someone, belonging to someone, feeling lost or helpless without someone, living for someone, and so on. Are these healthy or unhealthy sentiments to express about another person? These words could be seen as cries of desperation, obsession, and unhealthy connection. When Daniel Cleaver told Bridget Jones, “If I can't make it with you, then I can't make it with anyone,”[6] he could have meant, “I love you so much that I could never be with anyone after you. No one else would ever compare to you.” But it could also be: “I'm so incapable of being in a healthy relationship that it's hopeless for me unless you continue giving me a chance.”

The healthy version of romantic love, the one we celebrate the world over, is the consequence of a complementary man and woman’s mutual self-actualization. It’s what both truly want, and it’s heroic to put forth the effort to make it happen in spite of everything working against it. The unhealthy codependent version is the consequence of failure to fully integrate oneself. You desperately seek something inauthentic to you because it distracts you from the awareness of your inadequacies. That’s how love turns into manipulation for one or both parties. Ideally, our loving expressions would display our willing interdependence upon one another. I trust you, and you trust me like no other, even though we are each vulnerable enough to be destroyed by the other. We are one because we are both better that way—the best we could ever be in these bodies, with these identities, here in this time on this Earth.

To deny the natural drives, passions, and values within us would be to deny and defeat ourselves. To be true to ourselves is to acknowledge the principle of who we are, even (perhaps especially) when those fundamental truths about the self distress us because we cannot fully embody and express them. Bonding with the right woman is how the romantic man fully expresses himself because of the signature influence she has on him, that magical quality he can never find anywhere else in the universe, no matter the depth of his other accomplishments.

[1] Actually, the wedding ring might be the only romantic symbol that makes any kind of non-arbitrary sense to me. It’s a social signal to let potential suitors know not to get their hopes up about romancing someone already pair-bonded. However, the elaborate and expensive form they have come to take, such as the arbitrary insistence of spending three months’ salary on one, is more about indulging in a status symbol established by a manipulative marketing campaign.

[2] “LARPers” is short for “Live Action Role-Players,” actors who participate in interactive storytelling by pretending to be characters in a fictional or historical scenario.

[3] The concept of a soulmate, if interpreted liberally, can extend beyond the romantic and even human domain. My cat soulmate was a sweet, petite, blind, dilute calico named Matit. She became the standard through which I evaluated my relationship with all other felines because of how, by pure accident, our natures were so utterly, magically, miraculously complementary. She needed exactly me, and I needed exactly her for us to become the most expressed versions of ourselves.

[4] Codependence is a psychological and behavioral condition wherein one person enables another’s dysfunctional behaviors to the detriment of both people, characterized by reliance on others for approval, validation, and a sense of identity.

[5] “Pair-bonding” is a term from evolutionary and social biology that refers to a strong and sustained connection between two individuals of a species, instigated and maintained by recurring hormonal reactions in each other’s presence. In the context of human romantic relationships, it usually means sexual monogamy and lifelong commitment to aid in our prolonged period of child-rearing, which is one of the bases for our traditional conception of marriage.

[6] From Sharon Maquire’s movie adaptation of Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding (Penguin Books, 1999).